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WILLIAM GOLDBERG At the corner of East 9th Street, William Goldberg's barrage of advertising attracted attention to this drab stretch of Broadway. Passing up major landmarks in the area--the venerable Grace Church a block north and Cooper Union two blocks southeast--Abbott chose Goldberg's tawdry signs, "invit[ing] you upstairs" to buy a suit for $9.95. She stood in front of the monolithic Wanamaker's department store across 9th Street. Abbott printed the image in two versions: full frame, showing an expanse of cobblestoned street (Abbott File 239), and cropped, in which the signs hug the frame to become a ready-made cubist collage. In 1953, this commercial loft was replaced by a 15-story apartment building, a response to the demand for middle-class residences bordering the increasingly gentrified Greenwich Village. Return to Greenwich Village |